In at least one case, drug evidence handled by the St. Paul Police Department crime lab wasn't irrevocably tainted by the lab's flawed practices, a Dakota County District judge ruled last week.

Prosecutors said the ruling bolsters their claims that evidence that passed through the lab remains on solid ground, while defense attorneys insisted it doesn't have broader implications for the cases under review.

The ruling -- the first on whether evidence from the embattled crime lab could be viably retested elsewhere -- occurred in the case of Richard Ellis Hill, a 43-year-old St. Paul man.

On March 14, Dakota County District Judge Jerome Abrams found Hill, who had waived his right to a jury trial, guilty of selling methamphetamine. Hill is scheduled to be sentenced May 30. Lauri Traub, one of his public defenders, said she expects an appeal.

Like many crime lab cases, the evidence against Hill included drugs tested in St. Paul, then retested by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension after widespread problems in the St. Paul lab came to light.

The public defenders argued that poor procedures, defective equipment and other deficiencies at the St. Paul lab could have contaminated the evidence beyond remedy. They wanted the tested evidence thrown out.

Abrams ruled that, although the crime lab's testing was badly flawed and likely inadmissible, it wasn't bad enough to reasonably suspect the samples had been tainted or ruined for follow-up tests.

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Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom called the ruling "an important decision that we hope will be similar to future decisions to come down the road."

Backstrom said the facts surrounding possible contamination "are the same issues" in all of the drug lab cases that might come under scrutiny.

The ruling "substantiates our belief that there was no widespread contamination occurring at the St. Paul crime lab," he said.

Traub, who is representing defendants in other disputed crime lab cases, said the ruling "didn't help" the contamination argument, but didn't settle the issue either.

"I don't think it means anything," she said.

She said she was pleased Abrams found results from the St. Paul lab to be unreliable, but felt he "shifted the burden to the defense" to show crime lab evidence was tainted rather than making prosecutors prove it wasn't.

"If you want to take away someone's liberty, you'd better be darn sure that contamination hasn't occurred," she said.

Another Dakota County judge is mulling the admissibility of evidence in four other crime lab cases.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in other counties are discussing consolidating similar cases for crime lab hearings.

The BCA retested evidence from 192 cases. The results in 189 matched the St. Paul lab's findings. Ruling that the crime lab samples were tainted could undercut that evidence.

Ramsey County prosecutors dropped one case in which the evidence -- originally identified by the St. Paul lab as methamphetamine -- came back as negative for the drug in a later test. In two Dakota County cases, the BCA found drugs the St. Paul lab failed to detect.

Prosecutors in Ramsey, Dakota and Washington counties still are reviewing drug convictions from the past two years to see if evidence in the cases is sufficient for them to stand.

The state public defender's office is conducting its own review of convictions. It has identified 1,700 cases from the past two years that could warrant scrutiny.

The St. Paul lab hasn't tested drugs since last summer. St. Paul police are working with outside consultants to hire more qualified personnel and improve conditions.